Markan Authorship

• He made mistakes about Palestinian geography that no native of Palestine would make.
• He did not seem to know some Palestinian customs which would be impossible for a native of that region not to be aware of.
• These mistakes also rule out the idea that he could have obtained information from Peter.
• Internal evidence shows that Mark's sources were isolated, self contained community anecdotes about Jesus which he strung together like beads into the gospel.

Traditional Attribution of Markan Authorship

We note in Acts that it was to Mark's house in Jerusalem that Peter went after his escape from prison (Acts 12:12). Mark also joined Paul and Barnabas on their mission to Cyprus (Acts 12:25;13:15,13). Mark was also the center of disagreement between Paul and Barnabas; Paul not liking the fact that Mark deserted them in their mission in Cyprus earlier. Paul and Barnabas parted company with Mark going to Barnabas on another mission to Cyprus (Acts 15:37-39).

We have shown elsewhere that I Peter was a late document and was not written by the apostle of that name. Yet by the time of its writing, the tradition of the connection between Peter and John Mark was already so strong that Peter was made to call Mark his "son" (I Peter 5:13). [1]

Back to the top

Geographical Mistakes in Mark

The first example is from Jesus' itinerary in Phoenicia and Galilee:

Mark 7:31 Then he [Jesus] return from the region of Tyre, and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee.[a]

There is no hint here of any prolonged tour. The passage above suggest that Sidon is between the road from Tyre to the Sea of Galilee. However look at the map of Palestine below. The Sea of Galilee is to the southeast of Tyre while Sidon is to the north of the city. As David Barr, Professor of Religion at Wright State University remarked: "the itinerary sketched in 7:31 would be a little like going from New York to Washinton, D.C. by way of Boston"! It is simply not possible to go through Sidon from Tyre to reach the Sea of Galilee. What is worse, it is a known historical fact that there was no direct road from Sidon to the Sea of Galilee during the first century CE. There was, however, one from Tyre to the Sea of Galilee. There are thus two geographical errors in the above passage:

• Firstly, the author obviously did not know the relative positions of Sidon, Tyre and the Sea of Galilee.
• Secondly, he did not know that there was no direct road between Sidon and the Sea of Galilee during the time of Jesus.

Such a widely travelled native of Palestine such as John Mark (as our New Testament sources assure us that he was) could not have made such blatant mistakes about Palestinian geography. [b][2]

Mark 5:1 They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes.[c]

Similarly in Mark 5:13 Jesus allowed the demons to leave the man and enter the herd of pigs nearby which then rushed headlong over a precipice into the lake:

Mark 5:13 He [Jesus] gave them permission, and the evil spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.

From these readings it is obvious that Mark meant Gerasa to be a town situated near the Sea of Galilee. However look at the map again. Gerasa is more than fifty kilometers to the southeast of the Sea of Galilee!! There is not even a hint of any lake nearby.[d] As the Biblical scholars of Jesus Seminar so deliciously remarked:

Gerasa is located approximately thirty miles to the southeast of the Sea of Galilee, not exactly a convenient location for the drowning of the pigs. Matthew relocates the demoniac to Gadara, which is only six miles from the lakeshore. Later scribes tried other remedies to accomodate the pigs.[7]

Again such a basic mistake in Palestinian geography could not have been committed by a well travelled native such as John Mark. [8]

Enough geography! [e]

Back to the top

Mistakes Regarding Palestinian Customs

Given below is an excerpt from Mark where Jesus is quoted as making some pronouncements on divorce:

Mark 10:11-12 He [Jesus] answered, "Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery."

Jesus last sentence implies that women had the right to divorce her husband. But according to Jewish Law a woman had no right of divorce whatsoever. [f] In Roman law, of course, a woman had that right. The author of Mark had simply and mistakenly assumed that this was so for Jewish Law as well. Again the author of Mark shows an ignorance of the conditions of Palestine which is really impossible for a native of the country to make. [11]

Another example of Mark's ignorance is from the explanation he included for his readers regarding ritual cleansing:

Mark 7:3-4 For the Pharisees and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of their elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.

This passage by Mark has been the subject of considerable debate among Jewish and Christian scholars. Basically Jewish scholars have pointed out, based on the evidence of the Talmuds, that the washing of hands before meals was obligatory only on priests and not on lay people like the Pharisees and scribes. While it may be possible that some, or even many, Pharisees submitted to this ritual voluntarily, it is certainly cannot be said that all the Jews were following this. Thus Mark had made a mistake in generalizing a custom that was simply not practiced by all during the time of Jesus.[12]

Back to the top

The Author of Mark Could Not Have Acquired His Information from Peter

In short, like so many books in the Bible, we do not know the author of Mark. As early as Papias' time (early second century) the real author was no longer known. Of course the author could have been named Mark, as it was an exceedingly common name in those days. But we know nothing of him. [13]

The best summary on what we know of the author of Mark would be from Kummel's classic Introduction to the New Testament:

[T]he considerations against this assumption [that John Mark, companion of Peter, wrote the gospel of Mark-Tobin] carry weight. The author obviously has no personal knowledge of Palestinian geography, as the numerous geographical errors show. He writes for Gentile Christians, with sharp polemic against the unbelieving Jews. He does not know the account of the death of the Baptist (6:17 ff) contradicts Palestinian customs. Could a Jewish Christian from Jerusalem miss the fact that 6:35 ff and 8:1 ff are two variants of the same feeding story? The tradition that Mk was written by John Mark is therefore scarcely reliable. The reference to I Pet 5:13 ("The elect of Babylon and my son Mark also greets you") does not account for the tradition, but only the subsequent linking up of the author of Mk with the preaching of Peter. Accordingly, the author of Mk is unknown to us.[14]

Back to the top

How Mark Got His Material

In fact we see in Mark that the different episodes are attached together by link passages that are normally one or two sentences long. We see for example in chapter three of the gospel, the five episodes are completely detached and independent from one another. In the first episode, Jesus healed a man with a shrivelled hand. This part was introduced with the simple sentence:

Mark 3:1 Another time he went into the synagogue...

After relating the incident, another link passage appears:

Mark 3:7 Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the lake and a large crowd from Galilee followed.

The second episode relates Jesus healing many people in the crowd. After this there again follows:

Mark 3:13 Jesus went up the hills and call to him those he wanted...

Now the author relates the appointment of the twelve apostles. After this another link passage appears:

Mark 3:20 Then Jesus entered a house, and again a large crowd gathered...

Here Jesus answers the teachers of the law with a parable and finally we have:

Mark 3:31 Then Jesus' mother and brothers arrived...

The final section relates how Jesus renounced his mother and brothers.

The one noticeable thing from a reading of chapter three is how isolated each individual episode was from one another. The order of the episodes could easily be interchanged without doing any damage to the narrative as a whole. There is no organic connection between the separate incidents. They are almost like snapshots placed side by side in a photo album.

This very strongly suggests that the stories relating to Jesus came to Mark in isolated anecdotes from separate sources. Where could these stories come from? It is very probable that most of these stories were circulated orally among the followers of Jesus. Some of the episodes were probably even used in the worship of the early Christians and were probably written down earlier. The gospel of Mark therefore is, more likely than not, the compilation of the early Christian community tradition about Jesus. [15]

Back to the top

Notes

References

Back to the top